The Celts property is in southeastern Nevada (Figure 1) and is comprised of 67 unpatented claims (560-hectare) It is located 13 kilometers northeast of the historic town of Goldfields on the NE edge of the Goldfields district, which has an endowment of approximately 5.5 Moz of gold. (John and Henry, 2020, LLC website 12-11-2019 (https://gemfieldresources.com/about-the-goldfield-project/)

The Celts property can be accessed by maintained non-paved county roads off State Highway 95, which is the main highway connecting Tonopah, Goldfields, Beatty, and Las Vegas.  The property itself has several non-maintained dirt roads that access the existing shafts. 

The Celts property has two historic shafts on, and adjoining the property, the Gold Button shaft, which is part of the property, and the Nancy Donaldson shaft, which lies on patented claims adjoining the SW corner of the current Celts property (Margerson, 1986, Celts-technical-presentation-september-17-2024 (orogenroyalties.com)).  Eminent has not yet located any information about the quantity of gold produced, albeit the size of the dumps indicates that a significant amount of rock was brought to the surface.  Chevron, in 1986 and 1987 explored disseminated mineralization in the hanging wall of the mineralized structure hosting the Gold Button shaft (Margerson, 1986, Chevron, 1987). In 1986, Chevron performed limited grid-based geochemistry (mercury gas), IP/resistivity and VLF presumably along the mineralized structure that hosts the Gold Button vein - their claim block did not cover the rhyolite dome or steam cap (Margerson, 1986).  Neither the map nor the results of this study are available.  In 1987, Chevron drilled five shallow holes in the hanging wall of the mineralized structure hosting the Gold Button shaft, achieving a high value of 1.5 m of 4.1 g/t Au, 400 meters north of the shaft itself (Chevron, 1987).  None of Chevron’s work tested the conceptual model that Orogen and Eminent are pursuing. 

The land on which the Celts property lies remained fallow until 2022, when Orogen Royalties noted the geologic similarity between the Silicon deposit, one of the most significant recent discoveries in Nevada, and the Celts property (Figure 2, Celts-technical-presentation-september-17-2024, orogenroyalties.com).  Orogen Royalties, under it’s previous name Renaissance Exploration Inc., had originally staked the Silicon property in 2017 (AngloGold Ashanti, 2023) due to the presence of a rhyolite hosted steam cap consisting of advanced argillic alteration (alunite and kaolinite) and silica (Figure 2A, Celts-technical-presentation-september-17-2024, orogenroyalties.com). AngloGold Ashanti purchased the Silicon property from Renaissance Exploration and subsequently discovered 3.4 M oz of indicated and 800K oz inferred gold resources. (AngloGold Ashanti, 2023).  After the discovery of the Silicon resource, AngloGold went on to discover a much larger deposit within the Orogen AOI called the Merlin resource (9.05 Moz inferred gold resource) which together with the Silicon resource comprise the expanded Silicon Project (AngloGold Ashanti, 2023).  Subsequently, the same team at Renaissance Exploration (now Orogen Royalties) that had originally located the Silicon property began looking for other similar steam caps in similar rhyolite host rocks.  They used both satellite and ground based hyperspectral techniques to explore for advanced argillic alteration (alunite and kaolinite).  The features at the Celts property were very similar to that of the expanded Silicon property (Figure 2B, Celts-technical-presentation-september-17-2024, orogenroyalties.com) and thus Orogen staked the property.  Over the next few years 77 rock chip samples and 113 infrared spectral samples were taken at the Celts Property (Orogen Royalties, private database).

Eminent has reviewed publicly available age dates and found that the host rhyolite ages at the expanded Silicon project are the same as at the Celts property (NBMG: Open Source website - see section below).  Eminent also reviewed public literature describing the regional geologic setting of the expanded Silicon project in comparison to that of the Celts property and found them to have occurred under the same magmatic and tectonic settings (John and Henry, 2020). Thus, the opportunity at the Celts property is to find deposits like those present at the expanded Silicon project (see below).

The Goldfields District is part of the Walker Lane belt, which consists of 1) volcanic rocks formed during an ancestral continental arc during the subduction of the ancestral Cascades slab at 20-8 Ma (20 Ma at Goldfields (John and Henry, 2020) and 2) volcanic rocks that formed after subduction had halted: when high heat flow from the upwelling mantle flowed through the slab window, partially melting the crustal rocks above the missing slab. This happened as the convergent plate boundary became a transtensional plate boundary starting at 16 Ma: this plate motion continues to the present.  Although most of this transtensional motion is taken up by the San Adreas fault, approximately 20-25% is taken up internally in the Walker Lane, which also experiences Great Basin extension on its east side. (Figure 3) (John and Henry, 2020). The result is pull apart basins which are very good extensional pathways for both rhyolite eruptions and for the hydrothermal solution that result in gold mineralization. (https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2003/of03-077/text.htm)

The deposits that formed during the ancestral arc include high, medium and low sulfidation state epithermal gold and silver deposits that occur in arc related andesite and rhyolite, whereas the deposits that occurred after the arc subsided, during the slab window formation, are associate with rhyolitic rocks.  The resulting epithermal deposits are only of the low sulfidation type.  The geometry of the ore deposits of this age are affected by the transform/extensional environment resulting from the cessation of subduction at a convergent margin to the beginning of transform/ extensional structural environment at a transform plate margin, which continues to this day. (Figure 3) (John and Henry, 2020).

The discovery of the Silicon resource (3.4 Moz indicated and 0.8 Moz inferred resources) and the Merlin resource (9.05 Moz inferred resources, AngloGold Ashanti, 2023), shows the potential for the formation of large low-sulfidation epithermal gold deposits formed during the slab window event.  Ages of volcanic rocks hosting the low sulfidation state alteration and mineralization are 11.3 +/- 0.4 Ma at the expanded Silicon project, and 11.47 Ma +/- 0.2 Ma (NBMG, open-source website), strengthening the thesis that the rhyolite-hosted expanded Silicon project and the rhyolite dome and steam cap at the Celts property, formed as a result of the same tectono-magmatic event. The age date at the Celts property contrasts with the age dates of the rest of the Goldfields district, which yield age dates of ~20 Ma (Henry and John, 2020) and thus are older than the age of the Celts rhyolite.

The rhyolite dome at the Celts property is approximately 2 km in diameter (Figure 4).  The eruptive center of the dome was determined by measuring the flow angles – where they are steepest is where the center of the dome occurs (Celts-technical-presentation-september-17 2024, orogenroyalties.com). The center of the dome hosts an 800-meter diameter steam cap consisting of silica and advanced argillic alteration (alunite and kaolinite, which is the central characteristic it shares with the Silicon deposit (Figure 2).  These steam caps are typically barren in gold as they form above the paleo water table – gold typically is deposited in active boiling zones at some distance below the steam caps (Figure 2). 

The rhyolite dome complex intruded through a thick unit of solid basalt, which covers most of the Celts property (Figure 4). The high-grade vein at the Gold Button shaft is at the NNE contact of the basalt and the underlying thick package of older rhyolite.  There are other smaller veins at that same azimuth.  Conversely the Nancy Donaldson vein has a NE azimuth (Orogen, Celts-technical-presentation-september-17 2024,orogenroyalties.com).  The veins have typical low-sulfidation state textures consisting mostly of chalcedony and silicified breccia with minor coxcomb quartz.  Sulfides are present but not in abundance (Orogen, private database, 2024).  Although there are no age dates from these veins, their low sulfidation state of the veins suggests that they likely formed in the same hydrothermal event that created the steam cap.

As previously mentioned, Chevron drilled several holes at the Celts Property in 1987, intersecting 1.5 m of 4.1 g/t on the same structure as the Gold Button Shaft (Chevron private report, 1988).  Three of Orogen’s samples at the Gold Button shaft returned values of 33.2, 24.1, and 10.7 g/t Au.  Silver values of 219, 192 and 158 g/t were also obtained at the Gold Button Shaft.  A sample from the Nancy Donaldson dump assayed up to 3 g/t Au and 263 g/t Au.  Hg values up to 45 g/t were obtained at the Gold Button Shaft.  The high Hg numbers together with the chalcedonic textures and generally low base metal values suggest that these are high-level, low sulfidation veins, which suggests that they may have formed at the same time as the high-level steam cap in the rhyolite dome (Orogen, private database, 2024).  The presence of these gold veins supports the model that bulk mineable gold deposits could underly the Celts steam cap and the basalt aquiclude as suggested in Figure 4.

Eminent plans to use similar surface techniques at the Celts Property as to those used by AngloGold Ashanti at the expanded Silicon Project (AngloGold Ashanti 2023) including ground based CSAMT/induced polarization/resistivity, magnetics and gravity surveys as well as grid-based soil sampling. 

AngloGold Ashanti Expanded Silicon project Technical Report Summary - effective date 31 December 2023

Celts-technical-presentation-september-17-2024 (orogenroyalties.com)

Chevron private report, 1988, 3 pages.

Doyle, M., Burr, T., Jenkins, A., and Newton, P., AngloGold Ashanti Silicon Project, USA, New Gen Gold conference presentation, 2023

John, D.A., and Henry, C.D., 2020, Magmatic-tectonic settings of Cenozoic epithermal gold-silver deposits of the Great Basin, western United States: Geological Society of Nevada 2020 Symposium Volume.

Margerson, 1986, Property Evaluation Celts Claims Nevada Bureau of Mines and geology, Nye County Nevada, Unpublished Chevron Report, Reno District Office, 1986, 19 pages.

Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology: Open Source ArcGIS datasets - geochronology

https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2003/of03-077/text.htm

Gemfield Resources, LLC website 12-11-2019
(https://gemfieldresources.com/about-the-goldfield-project/)